"Politically, this country's leaders could not even conceivably
propose turning America into a nation permanently at war, let
alone one capable of such monstrosity. Unless, under the
leadership of both major parties, we had not spent decades being
inured to American militarism, and, in the last few years, to
bombings, invasions, and civilian deaths in faraway lands.
Granted, most of the least desirable aspects of American
militarism have been carefully excised from U.S. media, but even
so, what we do get to see and hear should horrify
anybody. It doesn't, and so, an apocalyptic vision like Shock
and Awe becomes just another abstract headline, part of the
arcana of military planning, completely divorced from the daily
reality of our extremely comfortable lives. No wonder news
editors don't think we'd care.
"But,
of course, as February 15 literally demonstrated, many of
us do care. And hopefully, many of us will keep caring long
after Bush either backs down or incinerates the cradle of
civilization. (Ashes to ashes, indeed . . .) The problem,
ultimately, isn't Saddam Hussein, or Iraq, or even George Bush.
The problem is militarism, and a purported democracy in which
its leaders think themselves above accountability for their
actions. Or crimes.

US Thinktanks Give Lessons in Foreign Policy,
Brian Whitaker reports on the network of research institutes whose views and
TV appearances are supplanting all other experts on Middle Eastern issues,
The Guardian, 19 Aug 2002

OPERATION NORTHWOODS:
Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba, 13 Mar 1962
From The National Security Archive:
TOP SECRET US government memo
on Cuba by the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposing plans to covertly engineer
various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba.
These proposals -- part of a secret anti-Castro program known as
Operation Mongoose -- included staging the assassinations of Cubans
living in the United States, developing a fake "Communist Cuban
terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and
even in Washington," including "sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban
refugees (real or simulated)," faking a Cuban airforce attack on
a civilian jetliner, and concocting a "Remember the Maine" incident
by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the
incident on Cuban sabotage.

"Before we rush to war with Iraq again, Americans must know what
happened in the last war. In 1991, we bombed Iraq's civilian
infrastructure to "accelerate the effect of sanctions" knowing
it would shut down their water and
sewage systems.[1]
The UN reported there would soon be "epidemic and famine" and "time was
short" to prevent it. We said that "by making life uncomfortable for the
Iraqi people we would encourage them to remove President Saddam
Hussein."[2]
And we waited for this to happen.
"We
used epidemic and famine as tools of our foreign policy. We
did it to cause suffering -- and death -- to get regime change at
low cost. We tried to force the Iraqis to do it. But it was not
low cost. We learned from the New England Journal of Medicine in
1992 what happened: "These results provide strong evidence that
the Gulf war and trade sanctions caused a threefold increase in mortality
among Iraqi children under five years of age. We estimate that an excess
of more that 46,900 children died between January and August
1991."[3]
"That
report was virtually ignored in this country, so that by
1999 UNICEF had to report on 500,000 excess Iraqi children's
deaths.[4]
"A
World-Trade-Center's worth of Iraqi children continue to die
every month. Diarrhea is "the prime
killer."[5]
Meanwhile we live in a fantasy world of surgical bombing, with
few civilian casualties, and the untrue belief that the
oil-for-food program could possibly meet Iraq's
needs.[6]